Of Strippers, stock markets, dating and everything under the sun..

If you've read any of my previous blogs, I'm guessing by now you have an idea of what the topic is gonna revolve around. Plus, I must tell you...I'm really bad at writing down stuff...I'm just better at talking about it..

So whats common between stocks and strippers. Well apart from the fact that they both start with an "s".....a lot more. In any case, this blog is not about strippers in particular...I just put the word in there to make it sound "sexy". But, yes it is about stock markets and value investing.

Someone once told me "It takes potential to recognize a potential", and yes that's true in everything we do. Right from the point when as kids we pick who our friends would be...till the time we choose our life partner.

My theory is that at any time you need to make a choice, you should think like a good stock picker. You need not pick the most glamorous stock or the one that is expected to give the highest return, but you need the one that has the "potential" to give the highest returns.

Hope you get the point...!!!

PS: Use the above theory at your own risk....

You might wanna get a life..If....

1. You call your friend list on facebook your "portfolio", and adding/removing friends is called "re-balancing the portfolio".

2. When you borrow money from friends you call it "raising capital"

3. When you lend money to friends you actually plan to charge interest

4. When you do someone a favor you record it under "goodwill" and plan to test it for impairment at-least annually

5. When you purchase groceries, you plan to "depreciate" them over their useful life so that you don't have to record an immediate expense

6. You are not interested in dating because you think the NPV of the project is negative, and you have somehow managed to calculate it.

7. You think marriage is like an IPO and you actually conducted due diligence on your partner

8. You dream of a world where they have 3-D excel

9. You think stock charts are "sexy" and you get aroused at the mention of candlesticks

10. When you go out to party you "capitalize" your bill and create an intangible asset instead of recording an expense.

11. You've thought about opening a clothing brand and calling it "GAAP"

12. You can classify people into assets and liabilities, both current and non-current.

13. Going through a 10-K is called "light reading"

14. When you hear the word "models", Excel comes to your mind.

15. You can relate anything in the world to finance.

And the biggest sign you might be need to get a life: You laughed at at-least 5 of the above points.

The Short Seller..

People are just like stocks, their values go up and down with events in their life. Say, you get a new high paying job, you value goes up...and this is not just commercial value which one can monetize, its the value society puts on you. You can say/do the dumbest thing and get away with it, because you are perceived to be "fundamentally strong".

But then there is a flip side to this, once people reach a certain "valuation", they are afraid to take any more risks, just in case things don't work as planned. They wouldn't want to be downgraded from their current status. In other words they prize stability more than ambition.

Another kind of people are who slowly but steadily climb the ladder. Once they reach a certain level and look down, they see all those people below them and this boosts their ego to an extent it resembles a stock bubble. They believe that they have reached a level where nothing can go wrong......and then the short seller arrives. Just like in the markets, the short seller is viewed to be a devil whereas in fact he is actually bring you down to your fundamental level before your bubble bursts.

Mostly the short seller is a just a sequence of events, sometimes it is also a person...whoever it might be..the fact is that correction will happen be it in the stock market or in real life.

So I went shopping…

This is just a figment of my imagination. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

The other day, one my friends said she was planning to go shopping the next day and maybe I should come along. To be honest, I’ve never been shopping in the truest sense where you spend hours at the mall and spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars (yes, I’ve started addressing money in terms of dollars..!). And to top it, somehow I never have enough money to go shopping.

So I thought what it would be like to go shopping. And then the weirdest imagery came to my mind. So, here’s my idea of shopping.

Person X: Long day huh?
Me: Tell me about it, I had gone shopping.
Person X: So, you spent some time, what did you buy?
Me: Yeah, I bought an oil company in Venezuela, a couple of manufacturing firms in China…and guess what; I got a real bargain at this mine in Chile!!
Person X: Man, you should have called me, I really wanted to check out some of construction companies in the Asian region, we could have gone together.
Me: Sure, next month when I get my paycheck maybe we’ll go shopping again..!!..hahahahha..!!

When do you wake up?

And no, I’m not talking about waking in the morning to bright sunshine coming in through the windows. This is more about the waking up of the inner core of oneself that only one can understand.

So, you’ve made all these big plans in life, the big desires that you want to fulfill and the big ambitions that you have. Then, one day you realize that none of that is ever going to come true. Do you really wake up now, or do you go back to give it one more shot?

There is a weird kind of passion people have, they chase things others see as impossible, the only goal in their life if to break-up impossible into i-m-possible (yes, I know its cliché..). But, there is a problem with this kind of attitude. Laws of nature demand everything return to a mean. So when do you realize that the thing that you are chasing will most probably not happen, other words when do you wake up?

I my opinion life should have some kind of signposts or completion status messages that lets you know that you are at least headed in the right direction, otherwise a lot of time and energy would have been spent before you found out that it wasn’t meant to be.